Stranger in Love, part 4/5
MASTER || PROLOGUE || PART 1 || PART 2 || PART 3 || PART 4 || PART 5 || EPILOGUE
PART 4
The sky was cloaked behind stacks of impenetrable clouds, layered one upon another. A picture of the Princess and the Pea fairytale as told from a perspective of the small, green globule. If it had any awareness of its place in the grand scheme of things, or if it cared at all whether the girl it carried could pass as real.
“She bothers me, Sammy,” Dean said after taking a generous sip of his beer.
He and Sam were leaning against the hood of the Impala in a mostly deserted parking lot.
“Who? Candy?”
“Who else.”
“I don't know, she's kind of likable,” Sam said.
“I'd go with intense.”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“Point is,” Dean said, exasperated. “She seems unnervingly real. 'S unrealistic.”
Sam snorted, then rubbed his finger over the droplets of beer on his lips. Dean frowned when he noticed himself watching the movement not quite peripherally.
“Even I wouldn't tap her, and have you seen her?”
Sam winced like he was in actual pain while subjected to his brother's plain comments.
“So you don't wanna have sex with her.” He made a show of turning the thought over in his mind. “That actually does make her somewhat suspicious.”
“Dude, were you even listening? I'm saying-” Dean sighed, clasped his hands on his thighs. “I don't know what I'm saying. All I know is, she feels real. More than real girls.”
“She is real, Dean,” Sam protested.
“That's what I'm saying; you don't even question it, and you usually question everything. I'm starting to think maybe we're more messed up than I'd realized.”
“What's that supposed to mean?”
“It means we each grew up in the company of guys, never met the family outside next of kin, never stayed in one place long enough to get to know anybody else,” Dean frowned at the empty bottle in the tangle of his hands. “We don't know women, Sammy. Now we come across this ET and she's the real deal, on instinct. That's kind of pathetic.” He stood the bottle next to him on the asphalt. “Reasonable, but pathetic.”
Sam fell silent, seemingly unable to come up with a simple answer. Dean was ever so complacent, even under the expense of recognizing himself as pathetic.
“You keep talking like she's not a person,” Sam said eventually.
“I don't know what she is.”
“But you know what she isn't,” he spoke over the sound of Dean's voice trailing off.
Sam ducked his head and Dean stole a glance at his pursed lips, profile striped with shadows behind his disheveled bangs.
“What would you say it is that makes Candy Candy?” Sam asked.
Dean snorted but he quickly regained composure under Sam's scrutiny.
“Sam,” he sighed. “You know I crave philosophical debate as much as the next guy-”
“That's not what I'm asking.”
A little wary, Dean waited expectantly for Sam to elaborate.
“Look,” Sam said. “Apparently you're taking a firm stand on somebody's status as a human being here and I just want to know what brought this on.”
Dean shrugged.
“She said it herself; she used to be some sort of multi-dimensional creature-”
“The dimension you seem to have problem with is depth,” Sam murmured. Dean graciously ignored that.
“This creature trespassed on Earth in the most convenient form which happened to be human. That didn't leave her unaffected, granted, but in the end,” Dean paused to search for the words. “You can't change what you are.”
“Ridiculous,” Sam protested. “We wouldn't hunt ghosts if this was the case. They were all humans once.”
“And now they're hurting people and we're among the few who know how to stop them,” Dean said. “And how do we do that? Oh, right, we begin with the research on their lives as humans, 'cause those pretty much determine the extra-mural.”
“Still, it's not like they all cause terror when alive,” Sam said. “Most of them were decent people cut off by gruesome death. What they became postmortem changed their psyche.”
“Sam,” Dean sighed. “Whatever Candy used to be, she didn't go through all the trouble getting here just to give up on her self.”
“No,” Sam squeezed his beer bottle. “No, she didn't.”
The cold wind was getting bothersome and they were a stone's throw from the motel's door but somehow Dean was reluctant to get back. He'd missed idly hanging out with Sam, the kind of thing that took a good part of afternoon, like it had today.
“It's all kind of Eastern,” Sam lit up. “The great journey of self. Very Hindu.”
Dean raised an eyebrow.
“Careful there, Sammy. Next thing you know you'll be a true believer in reincarnation.”
The corners of Sam's lips twitched up.
“It's like you know me or something.”
He looked up from where he was picking at the label on his beer bottle and the flurry of wind caught in what had already been enormous mess of his hair.
“You were staring at my mouth,” he said.
“You have a tiny scratch in the corner.”
Sam chuckled knowingly.
“See?”
Then he stood up, took the empty bottles in one hand and strolled to the motel door like all was right in the world.
One more cup of coffee for the road,
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go...
This is how Dean knew that they were in the diner even before he opened his eyes.
The steaming coffee pot was set on the table exactly halfway between he and Sam where Candy had left it. Dean reached for the pot, tilted its lip over Sam's cup to fill it. Still, it seemed like no matter how much he poured into it, the cup remained empty. Instead, a flood of dirty-colored liquid covered all the windowpanes from the outside with a thin, incessantly streaming layer, dimming the entire room. Dean didn't even once think to withdraw his hand. After a second, his outstretched arm started to ache and tremble, and as it did, the currents flowing down the windowpanes passed through one another.
Sam was leaning back in his chair by the other side of the table. His face was shaded in the moderately dark room but was still distinctly impassive as he watched and watched while Dean poured.
Candy's mom walked up with her notepad and said: “Rudolf, my late husband, bless his soul, always used to say that my espresso could raise the dead.”
“Jess!” Sam cried.
Still half asleep, Dean rushed on instinct to his brother's bed, found him tossing in the sheets, face covered in droplets of sweat, twisting in pain.
“Hey, hey, wake up,” Dean murmured as he shook Sam's arms. Kept holding him in a loose grip until Sam came to. “You all right?”
Sam grunted in response, rolled to the side and covered his ears with a pillow.
“Go away,” he mumbled.
Dean huffed a small breath of relief. Upset Sam was just all kinds of wrong; grumpy, Dean could work with. He didn't intend to let his brother fall right back into the nightmare.
“Not Biel or Alba, huh?”
Sam stiffened, rolled to his back again but not before shielding his eyes firmly with a hand.
“Don't pry.”
“So there is something to pry into here,” Dean sat on Sam's bed, settling down cross-legged. “C'mon Sammy, tell me about the girl. Is she hot?”
“Is she-” Sam started irritably, throwing his hand aside. He propped himself on elbows to better glare at Dean, but once he had, his voice instantly faltered.
Dean honestly couldn't tell what it was Sam thought he saw, why the sudden change. So maybe Dean was a little tense; it was understandable - his brother had just woken him up screaming. Under Sam's scrutiny, Dean realized he was also biting his lip. He stopped, too abruptly. He thought maybe he was holding his arms crossed a little too tightly, which he then very carefully didn't unfold.
“Sam?” he asked because the staring was making him overly self conscious.
Sam's face relaxed and he gave Dean a serene smile.
“Go back to sleep Dean,” he whispered, shaking his head. “It's fine.”
So of course it all went downhill from there.
At first Dean didn't put much faith in his own idea. Even while carrying it out, he still didn't expect it to work, but apparently it did. And to sweeten that even more, the casualties closed down to mere scratches on his forearm.
There were hundreds of various ways to fight the supernatural, pretty specific for each kind of creature or spirit, and by now, Dean had learned and done a good part of them. When it came to blocking mystical energy or whatever that was, it all seemed to boil down to salt. Ghosts couldn't step across it, demons screamed black when shot with it, or at least so he'd been told. Prophetic dreams came while psychics were asleep, and therefore not crunching on their French fries. Salt was worth a try.
He sprayed a haze of wood varnish over a window sill and grabbed his phone with the other hand and dialed his brother.
"Yeah," Sam answered.
Dean paused when he caught muffled sounds of the TV playing in the background on the other end. Whimpering, high-pitched voices at this time of day suggested some whiny chick-flick, so apparently Candy was there again. Not that Sam couldn't do the girly all by himself, but why would forgo that now that he'd gained a willing companion? Dean couldn't pinpoint exactly when, how or why Candy and Sam became besties, but the die was cast all the same. She would come by whenever she got late shift at the diner these days, if only he happened to be indoors. In fact, Dean could envision them right now, lounged together on the sofa in front of the box, passing each other a packet of tissues, engrossed in -
Doesn’t matter where you came from or- or how you got here. You are my sister.
Dean cleared his throat.
"I'm at your house, Sammy, come over," he said into the receiver.
"What? You alone in there?" Sam was instantly alarmed.
"Dude, I'm fine, I promise. The place looks safe for now. But feel free to hurry up if you're worried; I'm breathing in a cloud of insulation here," he yawned. "And I'm bored outta my mind."
He hung up before Sam had a chance to speak. He still had work to do.
In a pale beam of sunlight that was creeping up onto a dark, wooden board of the wall, Dean could make out a lively, floating cloud of silvery-flickering dust specks. Kneeling down, he tapped his knuckles against the drying wall; in the thin stripe of light he could see how that sent a small, white mist into the air.
Most wood varnishes contain plenty of salt. The mixture is specifically composed to tie all the ingredients together within the wood, salt included. This method preserves the preparation from rinsing out but can not keep it completely from spilling.
When Sam arrived he was all but weighed down under all the weaponry he'd brought with him.
"What's going on?" he asked.
In lieu of an answer, Dean grabbed Sam by the wrist, led him a few steps towards the window, then put Sam's open palm on a pane. Sam flinched, was about to jump away at first but soon he relaxed and skimmed the surface with his fingers, dragging them higher up.
"Lukewarm," he whispered. His gaze snapped back to Dean who was outright grinning now. "How did you-"
"I pretty much turned this place into a giant saltshaker. With just a couple containers of wood varnish, but it will do for now," Dean said, looking around. "Later on, I'm gonna try a timber treatment, that should do the trick permanently."
Sam leaned on the brink of a window sill.
“Uh-huh," he said, his gaze darting around the room. "You're not making any sense."
Dean wiped his hands with a shabby duster, sat down on a stool and set about explaining his invention.
"- so it seemed like salt jams this supernatural signal, figured it was worth a try, right?"
Sam nodded slightly, so Dean went on.
"From what Candy said, when something shows up here, it's because the house vibrates, induced by the signal. Only now, the second these walls so much as twitch, it'll let out small puffs of salt right along with it, so the signal doesn't get to spread. In a nutshell, signal triggers vibration, brings forth the supernatural, but at the same time the vibration releases salt, which hampers the signal. So it's back to square one. The stronger the signal goes, the more intense gets the breaking. There's no way around it, I don't think." Dean shrugged but it did nothing to hide his excitement. “Saltshaker. Neat, huh?”
Sam was standing by the wall across the room, just looking at him. Still distinctly impassive as he watched and watched while Dean poured....
Dean knit his brows at the unbidden flashback.
“It is neat, I know I'm not wrong about that,” he said.
At least Sam huffed a small laugh at that, shook his ducked head almost imperceptibly, nothing but the long bangs of hair giving away the movement.
“Seems to have worked, too,” Dean went on, feeling oddly self-conscious all of a sudden. "I know it's kind of makeshift, but didn't hurt to try; I always keep some varnish in the Impala for the wooden parts-”
That finally caught Sam's attention.
"You took that out from the Impala?"
"Well, yeah-"
"To use it here, in our house."
Dean faltered at that but in the end he only shrugged.
"You're paying me back, by the way," he said halfheartedly, scrambling to his feet in order to pick up the empty cans from the floor. "But yeah, seemed like the thing to do."
Before Dean knew it, Sam was close, looming over Dean as he straightened up. Tall. How was he this tall? Dean felt a gentle touch of fingertips ghosting over his skin just beneath a hem of his t-shirt sleeve. When he inclined his head to look, it was to find Sam reaching to brush dust off of Dean's shirt. Their gazes locked for a glaring moment but before Dean could do anything, look away at the very least, Sam's wandering eyes were already elsewhere, fixed on the crook of Dean's neck. His fingers followed soon enough.
Senses on high alert, Dean became aware of a twitter of the birds outside, heard every small creaking of the floor beneath their shifting weight. Sam had gotten even closer, and for a split second, Dean's instincts screamed stranger, still not altogether accustomed with his brother's new height. But that passed in a flash. Sam was rubbing away the dirt off Dean's neck with his thumb while Dean wondered idly if he was able to move at all at this point. As Sam's gaze seemed entirely transfixed by that little spot, Dean let his eyelids half shut, unnoticed. There were fingers combing softly through his hair, throwing sparks across the sensitive skin. Pulling free some stray thread, Dean belatedly came to realize. Sam's breath caught over Dean's earlobe and, on instinct, Dean reached to pull him in by the hip but his hand froze in an aborted gesture.
It all fell apart in a second; Sam's huge hand was on Dean's waist, What big paws you have!, and suddenly it wasn't because Dean had slapped it off hard, then shoved Sam away.
"Get the hell off of me," he growled.
He went for the door, only halting momentarily by the threshold. Hand clinging to the handle, Dean turned to look, forced himself to look his brother dead in the eye.
"What is wrong with you?”
Then he was out in the open, outside, unaware and indifferent to how long it'd been since he'd left or where he'd been, storming frantically across some empty glade. He felt sick. He wanted to throw up, but he didn't throw up. Maybe if he drank more of that salty water... Salty water streaming down his cheeks, he hadn't even noticed.
Dean felt as though the solid ground beneath him lurched, so much it actually keeled over. Gasping heavily, he choked for breath. The air itself tasted poison.
Dean didn't go back to the motel that night, and neither did he show up in the house again. The next morning he packed his stuff in a hurry, glad that at least Sam wasn't in the room. Small mercies. He would have to find him before taking off but at least he was spared his brother's presence for now, able to walk around the room at ease. He made sure that the card Candy had given him was where he'd put it in his wallet and, before long, he closed the door behind him.
Later on, he found Sam in the diner.
You tell me you don't love me
over a cup of coffee.
Dean only just suppressed an eye-roll at the song. When moving down the main aisle, he caught a glimpse of a fuss between Candy and her mother.
Not gonna be there on her birthday, he realized, and the thought stung like he wouldn't believe, like it was never supposed to.
"But mom!"
"I said no."
"Please, please, just this once -"
"End of discussion. You think I don't know what happens at those tea parties?!"
Candy looked away, and her gaze locked with Dean's by chance, though he couldn't tell if she was even seeing him, the state she was in. Sighted or not, her glittering bright blue eyes carried all the emotions right to him. Overfilled with unshed tears and anger, and heavy with hurt. There was so much hurt it made Dean falter in his footsteps. Just this one moment in time.
Later on, he never once hesitated.
"I decided to check on those numbers Candy gave us,” he said stepping to the table where Sam had taken a seat. “You should be able to finish the recon by yourself just fine."
Sam took a sip of his coffee, squinted at Dean. Then he nodded to the chair in front of him, an invitation which Dean pointedly ignored.
"You said yourself there was nothing to go by here in these towns."
"Just give 'em a once over, would you,” Dean snapped. “So that we know for sure. I'm not leaving loose ends here.”
"Of course not," Sam deadpanned, smiling mirthlessly.
An uneasy silence fell and it would have lingered still if Sam hadn't brought back the matter at hand.
"So, Candy's numbers. I remember you saying we'd have to go insane before we ever resort to that."
“Not what I had in mind but,” Dean frowned. "Checked," he said, humorless.
Sam nodded.
"All right," he spoke after brief deliberation. "I'm in. Dean, you know I'm not gonna find anything worthwhile in the vicinity. There's nothing to find. The house is secured,” he shrugged. “I say we're good to go."
"No," Dean said. "I'm going, and you're staying Sam, that or you go back to Stanford or wherever else I don't go. It's not up for debate."
Sam looked up at him then, and there was unguarded fear in his features, plain for Dean to see like he hadn't seen it since before Stanford.
"Dean, come on, we can sort this out."
"Not together, we can't," Dean shook his head, voice stern. "I'll let you know when I hit a lead on Dad, I expect the same from you. Otherwise I could use some radio silence."
"This isn't right, I want to find him too -"
"I know you do," Dean sighed. It was high time he went. "Look -"
He trailed off when his sleeve got trapped in a helpless grip of Sam's hand.
"He's my father too, y'know?"
Dean huffed a bitter laugh.
"Well, that's kinda the problem, isn't it?"
Then he left without looking back.
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MASTER